


rain against a window

by icarxs



Category: Anastasia - Flaherty/Ahrens/McNally
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Anya is a disturbingly cheerful con artist, Dmitry is Dmitry Nikolaevich Romanov and I am in Russian monarchy hell, F/M, Vlad can’t take another day of bickering, one shots because coherent fics are beyond me right now, sex work mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-06-15 08:50:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15409356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarxs/pseuds/icarxs
Summary: Mitya has never met anyone like her — he doesn’t know how one woman can still hold so much sunshine inside her when life has dealt her such a hand. He himself can barely remember the cards that were laid out in front of him, and yet he feels like his bitterness contaminates everything around him, as though the blackness of his spirit is encroaching on her light.“Now,” Anya says, “Let’s begin. You were born in a palace by the sea.”





	1. palaces above, alleys below

**Author's Note:**

> a collection of vague oneshots. This is shockingly on brand tbh.

Anya scrambles like a monkey up the side of the bridge, hand to foot, and so Mitya attempts to follow, fingers grasping the right bricks; still, he nearly slips on the wet stone. The smell and breath of the Neva surrounds them, but as they emerge onto the barriers the breath is knocked from his chest. Across the river, the sun is rising; across the Palace Square the spires and towers are lit with purple fire. There is nothing like a sunrise in Russia, Mitya knows that in his bones, the cloudless sky and the miles and miles of open space the sun has had to travel over until it reaches the alleys. Leningrad, no: this is St Petersburg.

Anya is breathless as she hops the iron barrier and lands, feet square, on the cobbles. “You see!” she exclaims, sweeping an arm at the Palace as if she herself is the architect, not just of the long building but of the sunrise too. “This is what it should be like, always. How the spires look coated in ice, though it is almost summer? _This_ is St Petersburg.”

“Yes,” says Mitya. “I’ve never seen it from here. There — the Embankment.”

The sun is creeping towards it, thawing out the shadows. Anya beams at him, irrepressible. “You see!” she repeats. “I used to stand down there, selling souvenirs — the French have deep pockets, for all their professed hatred of Monarchy. I suppose rebellious children all love their families the most, deep down — I know I always did.”

And with a grin, she is dragging him down the bridge to the other side of the Neva. Her palm is hot around his; still, he isn’t used to being touched, especially not so familiarly, and still it makes his head pound. The steps down to the embankment are as wet as the underside of the bridge, and they edge down them, because the area is deserted this early but they still don’t want to fall. The Neva is unforgiving; they would be swept three bridges down before anyone caught their screams, and even this close to the never-ending days it is bitterly cold. They can see the steam rising as the sunlight ghosts over the surface. No ice, but the memory of it. “I’m going to show you something better,” Anya promises, dropping his hand. They squirm between the barrels and boxes of the quay and make their way back up the bank, and then, there it is, the Winter Palace. There are no guards, not anymore, not even those of Leningrad; the place was looted clean long ago, except for the paintings too large to carry and the carpets stuck too firmly to the floor. Still, Mitya hangs back as Anya crosses the great expanse. Halfway across she realises she is not being followed.

“What?” she calls across the scuffed grey gravel. “Are you scared, Mitenka? No one comes here anymore, except the rats.”

_It’s the rats I’m frightened of,_ Mitya thinks, _the rats with rifles_. It feels wrong to be here, unspeakably so, but he follows her anyway, because Anya in this mood, he’s discovering, is impossible to deny. Above them the great blue and white walls swallow the sunrise, and in their shadow it’s still night. Mitya drifts to the arched entrance way, but Anya is disappearing around the corner, and so he pulls himself away and catches the tail of her coat as she, breathless, reaches the wall.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he says.

She blinks at him. She is truly confused, he thinks, by his reluctance. “Why not?” she laughs. “Doesn’t all Leningrad belong to us, Comrade?” And she salutes him, fist clenched across her chest. It’s a good one, even though he knows for a fact that she’s less a Bolshevik than he is a Tsarevich. Her merry eyes sparkle at him before she’s turning, her scarf trailing in the gravel that was once spotlessly raked and white, as she pries open one of the boarded up doors. It goes easily; they are not the first mice to sneak through.

They emerge into a corridor. It is dim and smells of dust. Anya sneezes, and pulls her scarf up over her nose. There are great touches in the walls where the gilt lamps were torn from their fittings; Mitya remembers when the electric light had first illuminated this area, how Maria had pulled and pulled at the heartstrings of the electricians until they gave her a light to dismantle. And then the memory is gone, and the corridor is only a corridor. He doesn’t know where it leads.

The fear is gone but there is a creeping sensation across the shoulders of his greatcoat and he brushes at them, as if it’s spiders. Their feet leave scuffs on the layers of prints already on the bare wood floor. Anya, her voice muffled through the scarf, says, “keep your voice down, I don’t know who’s here.”

“Rats,” says Mitya.

Down the corridor, then down another. They wind themselves up like scarves in a drawer. Gradually, the sensation of odd grief in Mitya’s chest fades as together they revel in the twisting and turns. The palace is like an old woman, beauty lost, tales to tell. They are so caught up in the maze of corridors that when they emerge onto the balcony, with the ballroom below, it is as if they have wandered too close to a cliff’s edge, and Anya steps back so quickly that she smacks into Mitya’s chest. But then she has recovered herself, and she grabs his arm. “Here,” she breathes. “Look.”

Together, two mice, they approach the balcony again. From up here the shattered mirrors throw shards of light across the grimy tiles. Someone has set up a fire in the centre, and the blackened cobbles, taken from some unfortunate alley, remain, coated in ash, but somehow it means little; it is swallowed by the cracked chandeliers above — their crystals long gone, captured by some enterprising Russian with a ladder — and the sheer magnitude of the room. “Oh, it’s empty,” says Anya, delighted. Her voice is made hushed by the room. “Good, come on.”

The staircase is winged as it descends, like an embracing swan. Swans, Mitya thinks nonsensically, mate for life. At the top, he holds out a hand and stops her. “Don’t,” he says.

“What?” She rolls her eyes now, out of patience. “I didn’t mark you for a coward.”

“I’m no coward, Anya Vladimirovna,” he snaps. “I think I’ve proved that. Why do you always —“ and he cuts himself off, jumping. He whirls, and Anya goes tense beside him, turning too. There is nothing but a black yawning mouth behind them; not the way they came, but with nothing but another dusty corridor behind.

“What?” she repeats, in a different tone.

“Nothing,” Mitya says, taking a deep breath. He faces the room once more. “I thought I heard something. Here.”

He offers her his arm. She stares at him as though he’s grown an extra head, and he doesn’t blame her; he doesnt know where the action came from either, but when she takes it, tucking her small hand into the crook of his elbow, it feels far better. They descend together, step by step. Anya reaches out one hand, skimming the bannister; the dust is less thick on it than on the floor, and Mitya imagines the children of Leningrad sliding down it and feels a little more grounded. The memory is so clear he can almost hear their laughter. Their feet meet tile.

“And now?” says Anya. Her voice is a little distant. Mitya sweeps her a deep brow; her brow is quizzical; she can’t tell if he’s joking or not. In return she curtseys, but it’s off centre and he laughs.

“No,” he says, slipping behind her; he takes her hips and dips her. “Like this.” He adjusts the sweep of her arm and she narrows her eyes at him, though her cheeks are a little flushed.

“I’m no dancer,” she says, “and this feels a lot like ballet.”

“That’s alright,” says Dmitry. “I lead.”

He takes her hand. They are the only people in the ballroom; as he leads her out their boots make a clacking sound in the ash-coloured floor, and their images stare back at them, shattered and distorted. This time when he bows she matches him, and her face is pale rather than flushed. “Mitya,” she says, and he catches her waist and pulls her to him.

It’s wrong; it’s not how one should dance in a room like this, but he tells himself that it’s the easiest one for Anya, who has never danced like this, to follow, and he’s right; he steps and she matches; he doesn’t need to count. The way they move is more of a whirl than a dance. They cover great swathes of tiles. His father used to dance with his mother like this, when she was well enough; she never liked balls and rarely stayed longer than the opening dance, when she went at all, but alone in the parlour at Tsarskoye they would turn on the gramophone and he would bow over her hand as though they were still seventeen. “Alix,” he would say, and she would smile and take his hand.

Dima would step in sometimes, but his father would continue to sing along to the record. He can hear his strong voice now. _How can I desert you — how to tell you why. Coachman, hold the horses, stay I pray you —_

Anya’s feet fly over the floor. He lifts her and she goes easily into the air and she laughs up at the ceiling, a noise of sheer pleasure and surprise. She is light as a feather, much lighter than Maria, who they all used to tease. she is so close that as she lands they are chest to chest; she has a freckle at the corner of her mouth. When they slow, she is breathing fast, and as he steps back and bows over her hand, he feels it tremble under his mouth. And then it is over, and Dmitry is dizzy.

“That song,” she says. He knows why his grandmother used to say that the waltz was terrible, that Nicholas should not allow it. His own pulse thunders in the hollow of his throat. “What were you singing?” Then: “you have a good voice.”

“The song,” says Dmitry, quietly. “My father would sing it.”

“Your father,” she repeats dimly, and pulls her hand from his grasp. “Mitya?”

“No,” he says. “No. I don’t know. Oh — I don’t know.” He feels nauseous from all the spinning; he turns from her and strides across the room; it is so large it’s like crossing an ocean, lit by shards of glass. The sun is fully up now, shining through the windows. “Never mind, forget I said anything.” _Bridge and river, forest and waterfall_ — he reaches the mirrors, but the face that gazes out of it is incomprehensible and visible only in snatches; a blue eye, a strong nose. It’s like looking at the impression of a ghost. He reaches out a hand, and hisses in pain.

“Oh, you idiot,” scolds Anya, surprisingly close. She grabs his bleeding finger and examines it critically. “Don’t get glass in it; come with me, let me bind it up, at least. How do you always make yourself as inconvenient as possible? — no wonder you survived this long, you’re too irritating to kill. Stayed breathing through sheer stubbornness alone.”

She stays chattering in this manner while she wraps his finger in a handkerchief, but he can feel her thinking underneath it all, and then, finally, she says, her head determinedly down, “where did you learn to dance like that?”

Mitya shakes his head. “I thought we agreed, no questions.” He swallows; his mouth is dry, but the ghosts are leaving him. He wonders if he’s going mad. “Let’s go somewhere else. Let’s go back to the Neva.”


	2. like a romanov

“What if he actually is him?” Anya says, trotting a little to catch up with Vlad’s longer strides. She is half-laughing. Ahead of them, Mitya winds his way through the crowd, broad shoulders visible as he dodges a market stall, his cap pulled low over his curls. Anya grins. “Imagine if we were the ones —“

“If he is Dmitry Romanov,” Vlad interrupts, hands with their motheaten gloves deep in his pockets, “then we have finally bitten off more than we can chew, Nastenka.”

“Oh, be serious —“

“I am serious.” Vlad lowers his voice. Over the last few weeks, he has lost weight; Anya doesn’t like the new lines around his mouth. She had been half joking — the thought that Mitya, with his constant snarl of irritation and his snark and the way he talks, solid St Petersburg slang, could have been raised at the Alexander Palace is ridiculous to her. But Vlad takes her arm and together they slow their step. “We won’t have just found a Tsarevich, has that occurred to you? His friend the deputy commissioner —“

“Friend! Hah!”

“— would not hesitate to kill him. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Together they glance around. The crowd is busy, but anyone could listen. They have lost Mitya, until Anya spies him waiting impatiently outside the fishmonger’s, foot tapping. He catches her eye and makes a face, and then he disappears behind a rundown cart and she feels a bit relieved; she doesnt think she could have this conversation with his eyes on her like that. “Kill him?”

“Dmitry Romanov, if he isn’t lying at the bottom of a Serbian mineshaft, is the Tsar of all Russia.”

“Good thing,” says Anya, her mouth dry, “that Russia doesn’t exist, then. We are Soviets now.”

They catch up with him just as the fishmonger is chasing him away. A Tsar, thinks Anya — a Tsar doesn’t swear like that, and she grins up at him, relieved. He only glares mutinously. “What were you two plotting?” he asks, then shakes his head, striding off once more. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

Anya exchanges a look with Vlad. “Brat!” she yells, after him, and he makes a very rude gesture. Not a Tsar — but she remembers, as she so rarely does, the letters Fedya had sent her from Tsarskoye, more than a decade ago now: _the Grand Duchesses perform surgery just as well as the normal nurses, only they are much better at keeping a blank face. The elder stitched up my leg with hardly a wince._ But that had been Fedya; he always thought the best of everyone. And he had never mentioned the Tsarevich.

The theatre is three streets down. It’s near enough to the Neva that the place always smells of damp, the musty red velvet cushions she and Vlad have slept on for nearly three years never truly drying, but it’s good shelter and safe. It’s rare that anyone else enters; the place is rumoured to be haunted, and the logic of the new Soviet Russia can’t completely eradicate a millennia of Orthodox superstition.

Considering that he’s only lived here for two weeks, Mitya seems to have settled in. As they all fall in — it is falling, because the sun is finally setting outside, and between them they have gathered most of a loaf of stray bread and not much else — he secretes himself in the corner that has become his own and settles down immediately. He’s like some sort of bad-tempered cat that they only keep around through obligation, Anya thinks uncharitably, momentarily forgetting the ten million rubles reward.

Mitya’s a bit old fashioned, isn’t it?” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “What, are you five hundred?”

“I didn’t exactly ask for it,” Mitya snaps. He has somehow managed to fold his tall frame into the nook beside the fire, and he has one foot pressed up against the wall, smack-bang in the middle of a rather terrible sketch of Tchaikovsky. With one arm folded behind his head, if she squints, Anya can almost catch a glimpse of the boy he must’ve been, even if he doesn’t remember him himself.

His hand is still bandaged; the cut on his finger hadn’t been deep, but it was over the join and has been reopening every time he insisted on using it — which is always — and in the three days since they had danced in the ballroom at the winter palace it hasn’t stopped bleeding. In the end Anya had had to strap it to his middle finger in an attempt to force it to heal, but she can stilll see a smear of red where the blood has stained the linen. She’s never known someone to bleed in that way before, but he just grins when she points it out. “See, red blood, not blue.” And then, maybe seeing her real concern: “I’ve always been like this, as long as I can remember. I nearly bled out a few years ago when I cut my leg, the scar’s crazy, let me show you.” After that she had become successfully distracted by their usual game of attempting to one-up one another, which, thinking of it, might have been his goal.

Anya pokes moodily at the fire, which is really a stack of burning playbills, topped by the wood they’d managed to scavenge. She doesn’t remember a time when she wasn’t cold, or hungry: there must’ve been one, back in the orphanage with Fedya when times had been a little easier, but even then, she can remember the ice that used to coat the insides of the windows. She twists the stick in her fingers.

Vlad is in full flow, but Mitya isn’t really listening. He’s heard rather a lot of facts about someone else’s life lately, and he’s starting to reach capacity.

“You stuttered,” says Vlad. “They brought in speech therapists from across the whole world — from Chicago, from Bombay, from Edinburgh.”

“You went with your father to Mogilev,” Anya says, still poking. “You lived in the barracks while your sisters were nursing. You were made a Lance Corporal.”

“How do you know that?” Mitya asks, rubbing absently at his eyes. When he looks over her face is strangely lit by the fire. For once her expression is closed to him; he can discern little, and the mask is so out of character for her that he sits up, elbows on his knees, leaving a dirty bootprint on the wall beside him. “Anya?”

“My brother was treated at Tsarskoye Selo in 1916.”

“Oh. How did he die?”

He feels like he’s asked that question so many times it’s written on his tongue, and she’s obviously been on the receiving end just as many times — there’s no point in sensitivity, not when everyone’s lost someone. “His whole unit were killed by the Reds in Kiev,” she says, waving a hand at him, as if to say, what can you do? “Too many of them had been royal guards; I guess Lenin couldn’t risk their survival.”

Mitya crosses himself. The action feels as well-worn as his old greatcoat, a habit he’s sure no nurse at a Siberian hospital had taught him. “I’m sorry,” he says. Anya’s face is warm once more, and lights up at that. She seems to grasp at any politeness he shows, like she can drag out his good qualities if she really tries.

“That’s okay!” she exclaims. He stretches out in the alcove again and closes his eyes.

“Go on, then,” he says. “So I went south with the Tsar. I would’ve been too young to fight, I guess. This was before he abdicated?”

There are no memories behind his eyes. He tries to imagine what it must’ve been like, fifteen years old, Nicholas at the parade ground, but all he can see is the face he’s seen his whole life on coins in the gutters, burning paintings, newspaper articles: not a father, but an icon. The snow he sees doesn’t cover the Stavka tents, but instead only the streets of St Petersburg. He doesn’t trust any glimpses he does get, besides: there’s no way to tell the difference between a memory and the recreation of what he’s been told. But sometimes —

Well, it doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Maria Feodorovna will recognise him, or she won’t. This is just to get his foot in the door. Vlad says, “you were a great rider.”

“Romeo,” chimes in Anya, “that was the name of the horse.”

“You used to hike with your father — Nicholas was a great walker. He’d drag you all up the hills at Livadiya. The court used to gossip that he’d have been a farmer if he chose.”

“And your mother — she never danced.”

“Never?” frowns Mitya. “Didn’t they have...” he waves a hand, trying to think of the word, “balls? Parties?”

“All the time,” sighs Vlad wistfully. Anya kicks his ankle and he laughs, pulled back to the present. “But the Tsar and the Tsarina were rarely there. They didn’t like it. I remember when Olga was first introduced to society, it was the first time they had all been seen in public, all the children — Tatiana so beautiful, Olga luminous. Except for Alexei, of course; he was never out. He was unwell.”

“Unwell?” echoes Mitya. He can’t help but notice that the royals had become “they” rather than “you,” and he prefers it that way.

“People said he was dying — he was always dying.”

“What happened to them?” Mitya blurts, then. “Olga, Tanya.” Their names are like cold marbles in his mouth; Vlad glances to Anya at the diminutive, and he appears heavy as he takes his seat.

“What happened?” he repeats, with a sigh. “Ah, my boy. Surely you heard the rumours.”

“My whole life is rumours,” Mitya says stubbornly. “All what he said, what she said. The guard with the pistol.” He thinks of Gleb. “A pink blouse and a hand through a window. I want to know the truth.”

Vlad looks at him. His plump, cheery face is unusually solemn. He says, “I don’t think you do.”

Mitya fires up like a struck match. “Don’t tell me what I do or do not want.”

“Oh, tell him, Vlad,” says Anya. When Mitya swivels to glare at her, he stalls; she has stamps under her eyes and her usually bright face is weary. “I won’t. But you can.”

  
“They were told to dress,” Vlad says, carefully, some time later. He had prepared for the telling as though preparing for a church service — though Mitya is not sure how he knows this, as he has never, to his knowledge, set foot in one of the damaged, hollow churches in Leningrad. There is something about him, though, as he pours the vodka, that brings to mind a priest; he is out of place clean-shaven. He should, Mitya thinks, have a sweeping beard. Vlad nudges the beaker towards Mitya and pours himself a double serving, then a single one for Anya, who has recovered some of her spirit. She has one arm loosely wrapped around her knees. “The Whites were approaching Yekaterinburg; they were to be moved. The servants went with them — the physician, with the youngest boy, the maids.”

“The maid,” Mitya repeats.

Vlad shrugs at him; there’s something very French about it. “There were shots. It was in the basement below the house; they were last seen walking across the courtyard, the Tsarina wrapped in the furs they had left. The Grand Duchessess had their heads held high; the Tsarevich was bruised. No one knows how quickly it happened, but in the morning there was a wagon that left the Ipatiev house, covered, and the family were never seen again.”

Mitya feels his cheek; it is cold. He chews the inside of his lip. He tries to remember — surely, surely, if he were the Tsesarevich, he would be able to hear the shots, but there is nothing. There is no bruise under his fingertips, and all he can see is a tall woman in fur, and as always, he isn’t sure whether she is a memory or a figment of his imagination. “What happened to the bodies?” he asks, sharply.

Vlad snorts at him. “Do you think that if I knew, we would be sat here, having this conversation?” Mitya resists the urge to make a face, and drinks. The vodka is hot. “They say that the Germans sent a telegram demanding the return of the Grand Duchesses, they being of German blood, but by then the family were all already dead.”

“Not all,” Anya says, with.some cheer, and she raises her pewter beaker up to him. Mitya rolls his eyes at her.

“Shame the Germans didn’t ask for the return of the Tsarevich,” he says, “I love strudel.”

Vlad smiles, though it’s a little strained. “Give the heir to the Russian throne to the Germans? Even after the peace treaty, Lenin would never be so stupid. No, I’m sorry, your Imperial Highness,” and when he bows, there is a glimmer of his old life back, “you were a lost cause.”


	3. you & I on the fly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for mentions of sex work and implied sexual assault. Mitya will be called Dima again one day no worries!

Anya is waiting for him outside the building, her hands tucked up under her armpits and her hat pulled low over her brow; the sight of her makes Mitya smile when only a moment before he’d thought he could never smile again. He claps her on the shoulders and makes her jump about a mile high. She swears at him in that St Petersburg way, _fucking asshole shit fuck cunt_ , and it blows the cobwebs of Gleb and his dark eyes right off Mitya’s shoulders.

He slings an arm around her waist. “Come on,” he says, brightly, “let’s get moving.”

“I thought you were gonna _die_.” Anya blows on her fingertips, which are white with cold. “I thought I was going to freeze to death waiting for your body to be thrown into the gutters.”

“That’s nice of you.” Tugging her into his side in a friendly, almost brotherly gesture, Mitya lets her go and takes a couple of lengthy strides, winding his way through the late night crowd of pedestrians hurrying home for dinner, of women with their heads down, of workers with dirt-smudged faces and hungry children who glance over him and decide it’s not worth slipping their hands into his pockets. When he glances over his shoulder, Anya is still wandering at her own pace. Sometimes she exchanges a smile with another walking the opposite way, but mostly her expression is pensive; lost in her own world, as usual. She has her hands thrust deep in her pockets, her shoulders hunched against the wind. They’ve spent spring together; Mitya can’t imagine what she’d look like in summer, in Paris, with three fewer layers at least and some warmth in her face.

They all look peaky; they haven’t been eating well. Mitya’s stomach still carries the warmth of Gleb’s hot water and lemon, and maybe something else, too. He raises his voice above the rumble of a cart that narrowly misses him: “he wasn’t going to kill me.”

“That’s what you think,” says Anya. He lets her catch up and they fall into swinging step, sleeves brushing. “What did he want?” She wiggles her eyebrows at him and he bumps into her shoulder.

“I don’t know why you think a Deputy Commissioner could afford me,” says Mitya, smirking. “You know I charge a lot of money. Extra for a Bolshevik; it takes way too long to get all that uniform off.”

“He’d pay.”

“Not enough.” They’re joking as they always do, that sort of cynicism that dances around the topic that they both understand, that moment when you’re starving and a stranger catches your eye in the darkness of an alleyway, but something in Mitya thinks that maybe it isn’t entirely a joke: he thinks of Gleb Vaganov’s expression when he said, those eyes. It makes him want to look in the mirror, to see if he can find the same depth there in the dark blue. He snatches a breath. “He was warning me. He knows about what we’re doing.”

“Warn you?” Anya says, frowning. “Why didn’t he _arrest_ you?”

There’s very little fear in her face. She’s been arrested more than Mitya ever has: for soliciting, she told him, once, then, a few years later, for jewel fencing, something that’s much more unusual. At least they feed you in jail, she’d said. Her irrepressible optimism is as incomprehensible to Mitya as Gleb’s odd kindness. “He said he knows for sure that I can’t be —“ for the first time, Mitya lowers his voice. For the first time, saying the word Tsarevich feels dangerous. “I can’t be _him_. He was at the Ipatiev house; it was his father who commanded the garrison.”

Anya whistles through her teeth. “You’re kidding.”

Mitya shrugs. “That’s what he said, and I don’t see why he’d lie.”

“He could be mistaken,” says Anya quickly, a businesswoman protecting her asset. “You’re the one who lived —“

“Come on, Nastya, I’m not saying I believe him, don’t panic. Would I run out on you now?” Mitya snorts as they dodge down a familiar alleyway, both ducking the low-hanging butcher’s sign. “Besides, where would I go? You’re my meal ticket.”

“It wouldn’t kill you to express a bit of affection now and then.”

“For a scrawny brat like you?”

“That’s coming from _you_ —!”

They skid to a halt. Ahead of them in a small square, arranged like bacchanal satyrs around the run-down fountain, are a group of men who immediately begin to whoop and holler; Anya grabs Mitya’s sleeve. “Let’s go,” she says, in a rush, “come on.”

He doesn’t shake her off, because there’s an undercurrent to her voice he hates. One of them, hulking, shaven-headed, the sort of man who doesn’t listen to a _no_ , says, “it’s little Nastenka! What a treat — and her new girlfriend, I mean _boyfriend_ , too.”

Mitya places a hand firmly in the small of her back. “We can go round,” he says quietly, feeling his ears go red.

“Too good for us now, Anya?” calls another. Mitya’s head snaps round; his voice is achingly familiar, his accent crisp and oddly upper-class, a French inflection.

“Misha?”

Then, in the half-light from the flat windows, he sees he’s made a mistake; the man’s face is unfamiliar, his features rough-hewn. He was scarred at some point, probably in the trenches, his right eye half-closed with raised blisters. Gas? Mitya wouldn’t know. He laughs, revealing several rotten teeth, though his bow is perfect and courtly. “Do I know you, _darling?_ ” he drawls. “Look, he knows me. Wrong name, but I’d be willing to pretend if you give me half a turn with Anya.”

“Fuck off, Vas,” snaps Anya, and with that engagement, Mitya knows they’re lost. He takes a slow step away from her. Several empty bottles catch the light.

They all coo at her, the sound of rejected, drunken men, egging each other on. Mitya plants his feet. He thinks of Gleb Vaganov’s pistol and the line it made at his belt and wishes he was by their side. “Weren’t such a snob when you were running with us. I guess you’re better now you’re a little _Tsarina_.”

“Oh, forgive us, your _Majesty_ ,” laughs the first, half-falling to one knee; when he tries to stand he barrels into Mitya, who gets a gust of unwashed skin, coal dust, vodka; he shoves, hard, and the man stumbles back into the arms of his companion. A flash of violence crosses his face, a wolfish snarl. “Suck my cock. Romanov _scum_.” He spits at Mitya’s feet. “If any of them lived I’d kill them again.”

Mitya’s fist makes a satisfying crunch as it breaks the man’s nose. After that, it all happens very fast. He stays on his feet; his knuckles are scraped raw. One of them gets a hand under Anya’s skirt, until she stamps back hard on his foot, jabs him in the solar plexus. Mitya hadn’t counted before they started, but when they’re finished there are three groaning lumps on the ground, and a fourth who is very still, a smear of blood on the stone of the fountain by his head. Anya’s face glows white with shock, her eyes bright with exhilaration. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I could ask the same of you!” Mitya exclaims, and then the adrenaline fades enough for the pain to hit him and he hisses, bending double over a throbbing hand. “Ah, _shit_.”

“Don’t punch someone with your thumb inside your fist,” Anya says brightly, stepping neatly over the prone body of one of the men and taking his elbow. “Come on, we can ice it.”

“You’re much too cheery,” says Mitya, but he does as he’s told. He feels light-headed, light-footed: it’s not the first time that he’s wanted to kiss her, but it’s the first time that he’s wanted to so overwhelmingly.

  
They put enough distance between them and their adversaries that they feel comfortable sitting, even though that in turn puts them at least a ten minute walk from the theatre, and Anya packs snow around his fist; Mitya watches snowflakes melt on her cheeks. It’ll be the last snowfall before summer sets in, he thinks, but they won’t be here to witness that August steam. They’ll be hundreds of miles and a lifetime away. “Really,” Anya says, pulling out the end of a stick of bread from her pocket and offering it to him. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

Mitya eyes it critically, then takes it, picking off the fluff with his uninjured hand. “You can’t walk halfway across Russia without learning how to take care of yourself,” he says. “Besides, I think someone taught me to box. Before.”

Anya hums and sneaks the soft, inside part of the bread, making him scowl. “Not well enough,” she grins, then kneels by his side and works on flexing his fingers out straight against the stone of the bench. He makes a noise of discontent. “Oh, don’t be such a baby.”

“You’ve had it easy,” he tells her, through a mouthful of bread.

She doesn’t look at him. “Not so easy,” she says, adding a fresh layer of snow; Mitya’s fingertips are numb. “My father died in a labour camp, I told you — if it wasn’t for Vlad, I’d still be in that orphanage. After that…”

She looks up at him, big blue eyes stark against the darkness of her scarf. There’s enough that passes in between them in that moment that means he doesn’t need to ask, and she doesn’t elaborate: instead, she smiles, teasing. “After that, sure, I had it easy. Learned how to tell a fake diamond from a real one, and how to lie about it. How to tell an easy mark.”

“How to lie to a Dowager Empress,” he says, because every time they find common ground he just has to break it, because he can’t stop the bitterness spilling out. Sure enough, the easy expression on her face hardens.

“It’s not a lie, Mitya.”

He wonders if she believes that. He wonders if he does. He unburied his hand and works the feeling back into it, not wanting to lose a fingertip to frostbite; what’s a prince with only nine fingers? Anya brushes snow from her coat; it’s already stopped, and the sky above them is clear and sprinkled with stars. It looks huge in the way only Russian skies do, stretching from horizon to horizon in a great black dome like the inside of a woman’s fur cloak. “I guess we’ll find out,” he says, pulling his glove back on. “Can’t be long now. How much more can Vlad possibly teach me? God knows he’s done enough French to last me a lifetime.”

“He hasn’t taught you French,” Anya says, “you already knew it,” but she looks distracted, distant. Mitya frowns, thinking over the fabric of their conversation in his head, automatically searching for the torn thread where he’d hurt her.

“You know, we should go as soon as we can,” he says, leaning forward. She’s still kneeling by him, and he finds it uncomfortable looking down on her. “They’re cancelling trains right and left. Look.” He digs in his pocket, his cold hand clumsy. “I worked an extra shift. It’s not much, but —”

He takes her hand and presses the coins into her palm, folding her uncooperative fingers over them. As fast as a blink she is up and away from him, her feet sliding on the rapidly melting snow, her expression drawn and distracted; she moves in a whirl of frustration so tangible that he thinks he can almost see it. He stands automatically also. “It’s not enough!” She tells a lamppost, not looking at him.

“No, I know,” he says, hands in pockets, uncomfortable. “But it’s all I have. I wish…”

He stops himself. He wishes they didn’t have to save for Paris. He wishes he could buy her something nice. Anya turns on him. For once there’s no optimism in her face. “I thought,” she says, slowly, “I could get us out before they closed the borders.”

“What are you saying?”

“I just…” she shakes her head, holds out the money. “Take it. We can’t do it. There must be someone else.”

Mitya is surprised by how angry he gets, so fast. This was what he was afraid of at the very beginning, this personal hurt from the end of a business arrangement. “Don’t be fucking stupid,” he snaps, “we have time. I _trusted_ you.”

“You were wrong to.”

“I don’t want your money.” He shoves her hand away.

“It’s your money.”

“It’s _our_ money!”

He swears then, viciously enough that she takes a step back, but he hardly notices, digging inside his coat. There are so many pockets, too many, that it takes too long, long enough for her to recover her composure and dash away the tears that are threatening to spill over her long lower lashes. “I didn’t trust you enough. Anya, look. Look at this.”

In his hand, sparkling. Despite herself, she grabs his fingers, draws it under her pointed nose, mouth slightly agape. “What?” She breathes, plucking it out of his palm. “Mitya, where did you get this?”

“I’m sorry,” he says, in a rush, as she holds it up to the moonlight. He’s never been more grateful for her magpie-like tendencies. “One of the nurses found it on me in Siberia. It was sewn into my shirt collar — she told me to only show it to someone I absolutely trusted. I should’ve told you sooner…”

But Anya isn’t listening. Her face is aglow. “Mitya!” she exclaims, beaming at him, and it’s like the sun’s come out. “You beautiful, _beautiful_ man. You’ve saved our arses. I can’t believe you had this on you the whole time!” And she throws herself into his arms, her exuberance contagious. He lifts her off her feet easily; he remembers how light she is from when they’d danced at the Winter Palace, and he thinks she might be even more flimsy now, like a butterfly that’s found itself in the snow, but how can he mind? For a moment their cheeks brush, and then she is dancing away, the diamond holding her attention far more than he can. “This’ll pay for Paris — this’ll pay for _everything_! We can stay in a real hotel, with a real _bath_ …” She wraps her arms around herself with an expression of bliss; he has to laugh. It feels like she’s shattered the ice that was creeping over the top of them — he can see the sunlight on the surface of the water, almost taste the oxygen. “We can go tonight!”

“Anastasia!”

Mitya’s hand goes to his belt and comes up with nothing but a handful of air; he’s not sure what he expected to be hanging there, but it’s alright, it’s only Vlad. His round face is anxious and he carries a battered suitcase. He barely sees Mitya; all his attention is focused on his adoptive daughter. “They’ve raided the theatre. They’ve taken everything.” He rounds on Mitya, and for a moment there’s real anger on his face; Mitya shrinks away, it’s so unfamiliar. “Your friend Vaganov.”

“He is not my friend,” says MItya, and Vlad softens.

“No, no, I know.” He waves him away. “But it’s a _disaster_ — all our money, our clothes, our food...what is _that_?”

In Anya’s fingers, the diamond winks conspiratorially at him. Mitya leans back against the lamppost, arms crossed, a slight smile on his face as Vlad begins to circle, looking for all the world like a vulture, checking the lifespan of his prey. “Is that…?”

“Real?” finishes Anya. “Why, yes, my dear Count, it is. As real as I am, and far more real than you.”

“Good God. We’re saved.” With an attitude of great piety that’s specifically designed to make Anya giggle, Vlad crosses himself, forehead, shoulders. He plucks the diamond from her like plucking a chicken. “Romanov?”

Mitya peels himself from his lamp-post and his attitude of smug benevolence. “I didn’t trust you before,” he says, “I should have, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? _Sorry_ , my boy?! You have nothing to be sorry for! With this, we can be out of Petersburg tonight! There’s a train leaving for Paris in two hours — if we run, we’ll make it!”

“ _Paris_ ,” Mitya repeats, pushing a lock of hair from his eyes. Anya is beaming at him.

“We’ll be out,” she breathes. Vlad kisses the diamond.

“We’ll be _rich_!” He snorts. “Or at least, _richer_. Even a diamond won’t make us rich in Leningrad.”

“But we won’t be in Leningrad!” Somehow, Anya has sidled up to Mitya’s side without him noticing. Now, she peeps up at him from under her hat. “We’ll be in Paris, and you can find your family.”

“It’s better than a firing squad,” says Mitya, tucking a strand of her red hair behind one ear. “Better than Gleb Vaganov and his lemon tea. Better than the theatre, even.”

“How _will_ you sleep without Tchaikovsky glowering down on you?”

“I guess I’ll have to find a replacement.”

She grins. The air smells electric with the promise of summer, before Vlad lightly cuffs him over the back of the head. “And now,” he commands, with a courtly bow, “your carriage awaits, my _Tsesarevich_. After you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m on [twitter](http://twitter.com/witchmp3) and my curiouscat is [here](http://curiouscat.me/witchplse) if you wanna be anonymous come talk to me about this I have THOUGHTS!


	4. coachman, hold the horses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this on a plane when I hadn't slept for six hours, and so I can only apologise.

The train is delayed. Somehow, Anya and Mitya have found a way to turn it into an argument; it’s one of the things she likes best about him, Anya thinks, his commitment to a good old-fashioned row.

“Would you two listen to me for one moment?” Vlad huffs. “You’d think I was a bridge for all the attention you pay to me.” He winks at Anya, who laughs, before he presses their papers upon them. “Learn your names at least. We’re a family travelling to Paris — me, Vladimir Popov, my daughter, Anastasia Vladimirovna Konyakova, and her husband,” he points at Mitya, who looks surly at the idea of yet another name, “Dmitry Petrovich Konyakov.” Vlad smirks. “You’re an artist.”

“What’s my art?”

Vlad waves a hand. “Oh, I don’t know, they won’t ask you. Pottery.” Mitya gestures rudely, but Anya has known him for long enough now to see the affection in it. “Just don’t forget your surnames and we’ll be on the _Champs Elysées_ before you know it.”

Anya traces a finger over her new name. It still comforts her to see her patronymic, chosen, Vladimirovna: her father’s name had been Mikhail, but she had dropped any identifying marks with him when she was seventeen, not wanting to risk the connection. Mitya barely glances at his own papers: what’s another identity when you barely know your own? The spidery handwriting is raised under her fingertips. According to this, she was born in 1899, which she thinks is correct, though her mother wasn’t around long enough to tell her for certain. Mitya’s says 1901, the birthdate of the Tsarevich.

She loops her arm through his in an attempt to pull him away from the dark cloud she can see beginning to envelope him. Behind them a whistle. blows, sharp and shrill through the steam. The great domes of the Peter and Paul cathedral are hidden by the late-night clouds, by the engine smoke, but Anya can feel them bearing down on her, as comforting and restrictive as any parent. Is this how she should have felt, leaving the orphanage? This confusing mixture of grief and longing, sadness and relief? She’s spent a decade wishing she was out of her city, and now the time has come the final step appears impossible. Once she’s on the train she knows full-well that she will never return — whatever happens in Paris, St Petersburg will no longer be her home. When Vlad had met her at the end of that road that crisp spring morning, worn down by her endless nagging, _please let me come and live with you it’s what Papa would have wanted I’d rather die than spend another night here_ , she had felt nothing holding her back, but the ties here are rather harder to break.

Anya doesn’t notice the man until he is right in front of them; none of them do. They’re all lost in their own thoughts. Mitya’s arm is warm under her hand; he is talking to Vlad in a low voice, something about hunting in Livadia. It’s been many weeks since Mitya needed tutoring; sometimes Anya thinks he asks Vlad questions just to hear the names spoken aloud, _Alexei Tatiana Rasputin Alix_ , as potent as any spell.

The man is tall, moustachioed. He wears a top-hat with a velvet brim, and the golden handle on his cane alone is worth more than Anya has earned in a year. When she was a child, when she had lived in a house — small, but clean — and had gone to sleep with a father's kiss on her forehead, he would have been the kind of man her father would’ve crossed the street to avoid. Sharing the pavement with a member of the aristocracy — well, Mikhail Yassanovich would never have countenanced such a thing. The movement would’ve appeared a mark of respect: it had been anything but. The aristocrat, for that is what he clearly is, does not slip past them and down the platform, like Anya is expecting. Instead, he halts. It’s as if they are mountains he cannot pass.

She gets an impression of a long, straight nose, a scarred cheek, oiled, combed hair under the hat, moleskin gloves, and then the man is on his knees.

The breath leaves Mitya as if he’s been punched in the ribs. The man takes both his hands and presses them to his mouth, then to his forehead, his eyes closed, like Mitya’s skin is an oasis in a desert. “Your Imperial Majesty,” he says, in this desperate rush, “you have my sword.” Then he looks up at Anya, and his eyes are a dark, deep brown. One of them is clouded with a thin film of white. Anya has seen war wounds: she’s seen men with missing limbs, noses, even eyes, so she doesn’t flinch from the injury, but instead the expression on his face. He kisses her palm too; she cannot snatch her hand away in time. “ _Tsarina_.”

And then, as quickly as he had appeared, he has gone. They all swivel to see his path, but the steam captures him. The train whistle screams at them to hurry; they can barely see two feet in front of them. Anya feels the absurd urge to cry.

Mitya looks at their joined arms, then up to her face; he pulls away. Hurt flashes across her face before she can control herself. “ _Jesus_ ,” he breathes, “he could have killed us all.”

“That was Count Ipolitov,” says Vlad, sounding distant with helpless shock. “He’s an intellectual and a noble; he should be dead twice over.” He looks at Mitya as if seeing him for the first time. “He must have recognised you. You're right — if anyone saw, he’s damned himself and us.”

“No one saw,” says Anya, faintly, though she can’t know for sure, “or they would’ve shot us.” She flexes out her hand, the burning imprint of his kiss is still on her palm. It feels like candle wax. She picks up her suitcase, ignoring Mitya’s aborted gesture of attempted assistance.

“Please board the train!” comes the call of the conductor, and the three of them clamber awkwardly up the iron steps. “Last call for Paris!”

At the door, Anya turns. The engine judders into life beneath their feet — it’s a converted cattle car and there’s no suspension, she can feel every track, every wheel. The sky clears. St Petersburg blinks at her, surprised at being so unceremoniously revealed. Maybe, if she ever returns, everyone will be calling it Leningrad, the old swallowed by the new: but then, Count Ipolitov hasn’t broken free from his history, so why should her city? He was willing to risk his life for one rushed pledge of allegiance. The domed skyline likewise dares the Soviets to do their worst.

“Anya!” Mitya is waiting down the rickety corridor, face a picture of frustration. “Come on.”

Anya turns her back on the receding city. “I’m _coming_!” she exclaims, manages a passable impression of her usual irritation, “what, do you want me to bow to you too?” And the spell is broken.

* * *

 

They have been travelling for what feels like days, but is in fact only around six hours: the darkness outside defies any attempt at locating them, but with his knowledge of the sheer vastness of Russia, Mitya thinks gloomily that they likely haven’t even reached the border. They are surrounded by babbling artists, by snooty nobility who have only just shut up about the cramped conditions, mothers with children on their laps, pale-faced White emigres. Vlad clicks his fingers under Mitya’s nose, jerking him out of his half-doze. “Catherine the Great’s lovers. Go.”

“In what order?” Mitya replies smartly. “Chronological? Order of attractiveness?”

He stifles a yawn.

“Orlov,” grins Anya. Mitya points at her.

“She knows.”

Vlad looks fatigued. “Chronological, Dmitry, and don’t be smart.”

Mitya clears his throat and assumes a serious, scholarly expression that makes Anya giggle. “Saltykov,” he begins in a deep sonorous voice, “he of the wandering eyes. Poniatowski, King of Poland. Grigory Orlov, whose brother was a murderer. Prince Potemkin, the one-eyed wonder. Zavadovsky —“

“Didn’t I tell you not to be smart?” Vlad interrupts, but there’s a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. The train rattles hard over a gap in the tracks, sending them all swaying; Vlad waves a hand. “Wrap it up, I don’t actually care.”

Mitya runs a hand briefly through his hair, which is damp from the steam. “Zorich, Rimsky-Korsakov, Lanskoy, Yermolov, Mamanov, Zubov.”

“Very good, except that you forgot Vasilchikov.”

“Everyone forgets Vasilchikov,” Mitya says unrepentantly.

“Vasilchikov forgot Vasilchikov,” says Anya, and they both snigger. Vlad eyes them wryly.

“If you’re _quite_ finished.”

“Oh, come on,” says Mitya, “the Dowager Empress isn’t going to ask about the love life of a woman who died two hundred years ago.”

“It’s not Maria Feodorovna you have to impress,” says Vlad, “it’s Lily, and I happen to know that she is a great fan of Imperial history. Besides, Dmitry Nikolaevich would’ve had it drilled into him from birth, even the unsavoury bits, just so he could refute them at dinner parties.”

“Well, _that’s_ a time in my life I’m glad I don’t remember,” Mitya mutters. Before Vlad — whose attitude over the last week has wavered from exasperated history teacher to giddy school-boy in love, and whose patience had been sorely tested by both his charges over the long day buying tickets out of Petersburg — can express his irritation with a sharp clap over the head, the train suddenly screeches to a halt. Anya is nearly propelled clean across the aisle, and only Mitya’s arm, thrown out across her chest and knocking the air out of her, prevents her from landing on the family opposite. They are all too busy scrambling to see what’s happened to worry about her winded gasps.

“They’d better not be checking our damn papers _again_ ,” Vlad swears. “I don’t know where they’re expecting anyone to hide in this place —”

Mitya stands, craning his neck over the crowd. There’s a commotion at the front of the carriage, and he thinks he catches a glimpse of uniform that sends his stomach flipping. “I can’t see.”

“I’ll go,” says Vlad, grabbing his shoulder and shoving him bodily back down onto the bench. He tries to look threatening, but his face is too used to cheer to manage it. “You two, stay put.”

Mitya snaps a salute. “ _Sir_ ,” he smirks, and Vlad narrows his eyes before he disappears through the crowd, shoving his way to the front. The clatter of falling boxes has ceased, but everyone in the make-shift carriage is talking at once. Mitya gives up on trying to see over the heads of the loud Serbs behind them and collapses into something approaching a sulk, arms crossed, legs akimbo. Anya elbows him in the side.

“It’ll be fine,” she says.

“Did I say it wouldn’t be?” Mitya snaps back in response. Then, feeling a little bad despite himself: “doesn’t it ever get tiring, being you?”

She beams at him, an Orthodox Saint in a ragged greatcoat. “You should try being optimistic for a change. It might stop you getting so many wrinkles.” She pokes at the crease between his eyebrows and he slaps her hand away. “Hey!”

She slaps back and for a moment they scrabble at each other like children, laughing, until he catches her wrists in one hand and twists them back. “Stop!” she cries. “You win!” and she flops back against his side, swinging her boots up into the space Vlad had been. The carriage is beginning to get cold now the train isn’t moving; there’s snow falling outside, and Mitya can see her breath puffing out of the corner of his eye. Her weight is comforting and solid against his side, but he doesn’t put an arm around her; that would cross a boundary he is afraid to acknowledge. She can never stay quiet for long: “do you think —?”

Anya never finishes her sentence; she is cut off by the sharp crack of a shot, followed by a scream. There’s something about the sound, horrifyingly familiar, muffled by snow and followed by the boom of falling ice, that sends Mitya scrambling, his heart in his mouth, away from her. His vision sparkles with black spots. He can’t breathe; Anya has both hands on his face before he knows what’s happening, and he realises time must’ve passed, maybe even minutes. They are crouched on the floor between benches. Everyone ignores them; no one cares about anything except the shot, and ensuring it isn’t them.

“Mitya,” Anya is saying, “Mitenka, look at me, Holy Mother, what’s happening, can you see me?”

He pants like he’s surfaced from a lake, from the ocean, like he’s just dived from the side of a yacht. “I’m sorry,” he gasps, then, again: “I’m sorry, no, I’m fine. What was that. Did it hit you?” His hands move feverishly over her shoulders and back but encounter no warm rush of blood. Anya looks oddly red in the half-light.

“I’m okay, it was outside.”

He is shaking hard enough that even under their combined power it’s difficult to get him back on the bench. He shrugs off Anya’s hands and puts his head between his knees, stares unseeing at the slats and the snow-covered tracks beneath. Anya has one hand between his shoulder-blades. “Are you going to be sick?” she asks practically.

“No,” he says, hollowly, though he actually doesn’t know for sure. “The soldiers. They’re gone?”

“I haven’t seen any soldiers.” Anya’s voice twists with distress. “ _Mitenka_. Look at me.”

He does. His vision has cleared enough that he thinks he might spot something like a tear track on her face, but then Vlad looms in front of them. His face is white and set. “We need to get off this train.”

“Off?” Anya repeats, like she’s never heard the word, but Mitya is glad for the distraction. He grabs her bag and his, shivering for cold now. His head clears.

“They’re searching for two men and a girl.”

“That could be anyone.”

Vlad waves sketches of them in front of Anya’s pointed nose. “I don’t think so! Count Ipolitov is no more, and we’re next. We’ll have to jump.”

“ _Jump?_ ” repeats Anya, but Mitya isn’t waiting for further explanations; he seizes her arm and drags her bodily over to the door. Feet below them a snowdrift glints invitingly, but he knows there could be anything underneath: rocks, ice, trees. Oh, God, its high.

“Ladies first,” he offers, through gritted teeth.

“You have _got_ to be joking.”

“Okay, age before beauty.”

“If you think for _one second_ —“

“No time!” Vlad says from behind them, and shoves them both, hard, out of the train and into the snow below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m on [twitter](http://twitter.com/witchmp3) and my curiouscat is [here](http://curiouscat.me/witchplse) if you wanna be anonymous. come give me your opinions on Imperial Russia.


	5. what's meant to be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romanov family reunions never go well.

For a second, as Mitya — Dmitry, as he supposes he’ll have to get used to calling him now, His Imperial Majesty Dmitry Nikolaevich Romanov I of Russia, Jesus Mary and Joseph — turns, Vlad sees him as Lily must. Tall, sharp-jawed, that crease between strong dark eyebrows that means he’s been thinking too hard about something. A lock of hair, untameable, falls in dark blue eyes; he is gracious to the valet who brings him his shirt, but otherwise barely seems to notice him, taking the service as his due. There is red piping down the sides of his stiff blue trousers, and his undershirt stretches taught over broad shoulders. The jacket hangs by the side of the mirror, ghost-like in the stern shape of its epaulettes;; it could stand on its own, supported by the stiff gold braiding. Not for the first time, Vlad wonders where Lily found the damn thing. Did someone smuggle a trunk of uniforms out of Moscow? He wouldn’t be surprised.

Seeing them, Mitya bows. Vlad often forgets that he is twenty-seven; at that age he himself had been married twice, but circumstances are hardly the same. Vlad clears his throat, nudging Lily in front of him. “His Imperial Majesty Dmitry Nikolaevich Romanov the First, by the Grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias, Moscow, Kiev, Vladimir, Novgorod; Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan, Tsar of Poland, Tsar of Siberia —“

“Alright,” Mitya interrupts, looking a little red around the cheekbones, “I’m sure the Countess has heard it all before.”

 

When they’d arrived in Paris, it had been almost night. It had taken them two hours to get a hotel; it had taken Vlad another two days to get in contact with Lily at the Neva Club. Getting in was easy. They didn’t check accreditation there any more than they ever had at Peterhof, and Vlad had bought, with some of the diamond money, a smart suit and a top hat, and the doors had opened. They always did, when you looked like money, and Vlad was very good at faking it - but not as good, it seemed, as Mitya was.

Lily had protested. Lily had demurred. Lily had said, as they walked along the Seine and watched the years fall away between them, that the Dowager Empress was seeing _no one._ She had been conned too many times; too many grandsons and granddaughters crawling out from the ashes. There was the German, the Greek - and too many Russians to count, but none of them had been Dmitry Romanov, nor Tatiana Romanova, nor Olga. No one had come close to convincing them they were Alexei. “He had a blood disease,” Lily confesses to Vlad. She never could hold her tongue, and with the family dead, the Empress had not seen any reason to keep their secrets. “One nick of a bullet and he would’ve been dead anyway.”

“A blood disease?” Vlad says, thoughtfully. He has her small hand tucked into the pocket of his coat, and he rubs a thumb over her palm. “You know, my boy -”

“Oh, stop,” she’d snapped, pulling away. He watches her as she gathers her furs around her, sobered by the early morning air blowing off the river. She looks the same as she always did, same small, pointed nose, same air of indefatigable snobbery. “Why all these _lies_.”

“I’m not lying,” Vlad insists. “I’m wouldn’t bother. Lily, I don’t know if the boy is the Tsesarevich. No one does - _he_ doesn’t. All we’re asking for is an _audience_. Just one, just to _see_. For God’s sake - he wants to know as badly as she does. And if he is, then…”

“Then,” Lily points out, the gold thread on her coat glimmering, “Cyril Romanov _won’t_ be happy. Did you hear that he’s declared himself Emperor?”

“He isn’t recognised,” Vlad rejoins swiftly. “The Empress always hated him.”

“And his brother hardly laid to rest,” Lily mutters, sounding rather more fascinated than disapproving. “The lives these people lead.” And then she said, “the _legitimisti_ will have to accept him to save their pride. If he’s recognised by the Empress.”

They are speaking Russian. Vlad is reminded, fiercely, horribly, of the Alexander Palace in ‘16, when the rumbles were snaking their tendrils through the court. _Legitimisti_. Recognised. _These people_. He switches to French in a movement akin to pulling his coat tighter around them; it feels safer that way. He says, “this isn’t politics.”

“Darling,” Lily tells him, that superior expression on her face, as if he, a gutter rat, could _never_ understand, “ _everything_ is politics.”

She’d said, “bring him to the ballet. Everyone loves the ballet.” She’d said, “I can get him a uniform,” and she had, meeting Vlad in the lobby of the hotel with a valet and a trunk and a saber in her right hand that she’d somehow managed to carry through the streets of Paris. She’d taken Anya out shopping and brought her back laden down with dresses bought with the Empress’s rubles; Vlad had never seen Anya shine like that, and feels that awful pang of guilt familiar to every Russian. _Why do I have, when others do not?_ And then he’d brought Lily up the curving grand stairs to Mitya’s room, and -

Mitya takes Lily’s plump hand in his own and kisses it. Lily looks a little overcome; Vlad narrows his eyes at Mitya, who grins, flicking his hair out of his eyes. “My, my,” Lily breathes, fluttering, “he certainly does _look_ like the Tsarevich. Nicholas’s brow, oh, yes, and Alexandra’s smile — what a man you have found, Vovan. So handsome…”

“Yes, yes,” Vlad says, disgruntled, “very handsome.” Mitya mouths, mocking, _Vovan?_ at him, and Vlad hides a smile by taking Lily’s elbow, leading her over to the over-stuffed chintz chair in the corner. The valet helps Mitya into his shirt, fastening the cufflinks as Mitya regards himself in the mirror, lapsing back into his usual critical expression. Lily sits prettily, her ankles crossed, but her habitual composure is noticeably lacking.

“You know, it’s not just looks that will get you to the Empress’s side,” she says, sternly. “I must check, first of all, that you are who you say you are.”

“You will be a better judge of that than I will,” says Mitya, quietly. There are so many layers to the uniform; Vlad had quite forgotten what it was like, dressing for an event like this. One thing can be said for the Bolsheviks: minimalism over pomp certainly saves time. The valet stands with hands moving faster than light, buckling, fastening. Mitya hardly seems to notice; he is looking at the jacket now. If Vlad squints, if he looks out of the corner of his eye, it is almost as if Nicholas is standing there; Nicholas who had brought back the circumstance and the braiding, the medals, the brocade, all at the expense of millions. Well, no matter. This is not about politics.

“Lily, my dear,” he begins smoothly, “I told you, his Imperial Majesty has no intention of manipulating the Empress. I believe — and I’m sure you will too — that she will see him for who he truly is in an instant: how could she not? The things he can remember…”

Mitya turns on him, narrowly avoiding elbowing the long-suffering valet in the eye. “I never said I could remember them!” he exclaims, flaring up, “I don’t even know if the things I can see are real. I said I wouldn’t lie.” But his outburst doesn’t go any way towards dissuading Lily; on the contrary, his rapid temper only makes her eyes light up further.

“How familiar you are!” she exclaims, bustling over to him. She circles (the valet dodges), running a hand down the smooth line of his right arm. Mitya presses his lips together, tight. “Now save me the trouble, tell me: where were you born?”

 

At the end of it all, Mitya is dressed; far from appearing uncomfortable, as Vlad had always done in Imperial costume, he wears the uniform with grace. The medals sit, shining, on his chest; his hand rests easily on the jewel-encrusted hilt of his sword as he follows Lily’s progress around the room with tired eyes. The woman never could sit still. “And finally,” she says, halting by the large bay windows. Beyond her the lights of Paris mock them all with their modernity, their simplicity. “You may find this a presumptuous question, but I have to ask it, I’m too curious...how did you survive? The Empress was assured that all the family had been killed; I was there when she received the telegram. There were no details, but our source was exceptionally firm. I myself have never quite believed that any of the family could have escaped, but you…”

She waves a hand at him, as if to encompass everything; his looks, his answers, the French they had slipped into halfway through the conversation without a hitch. Vlad manages to hide his wince. Here it is: the thread that can bring them all undone, the factor that had always prevented him from really seeing Mitya as the Tsarevich. How convenient, that his memory stops where it does, how easy for him: but the man’s face is distant.

“I won’t lie to you,” he says, and his thumb rubs over the top of the sword, and his eyes are cloudy and hesitant. “I can’t remember that night. I was told…” He touches the side of his face, his cheekbone. “I was found by the side of the road. They couldn’t see who had brought me there; the snow covered everything. I was almost dead with cold, and I still have a scar, here —” He gestures to his chest, under the medal of the Imperial White Eagle, and Vlad blinks. _Another secret he hadn’t known_. “There was a diamond sewn into my shirt. I dream sometimes of shots, of fire — of bayonets.” He shakes his head. “But I can’t tell you. Perhaps one of the soldiers took pity on me. If the Empress is hoping for a complete tale, I can’t give her one.”

Lily’s face is oddly soft. She struggles on her words; Vlad has never seen her like this. He takes a step towards her, fear strikes him deep in his gut, but she holds out a hand to stop him in his tracks, and he does, because he can’t help but obey her. He’s a terrible Soviet, though it’s more because she’s a woman than because she’s a Countess.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” she says, and then she dips, in front of the windows, the great skyline spread out behind her, into such a curtsey that Vlad has not seen for ten years, her skirts pooling around her, and she stays there, her old knees straining, until Mitya goes to her and raises her up, hands on her forearms, and kisses her cheeks, and when the gas lights go on, there are tears on her face.

 

The valet leaves them. Lily recovers herself. Vlad is sick with fright now, because if Lily is convinced - really convinced - then they _have_ something. He remembers saying to Anya, a thousand years ago in the different world that was Petersburg, if he’s the Tsesarevich, we’re dead. He doesn’t know if by dragging Mitya out of his world of lost memories they have more surely damned him or themselves. Lily bustles them out of the room, cloaked in embarrassment at her uncharacteristic show of emotion; that mingled Russian adoration of monarchy and hatred of it crossing her face in confused flashes. She says, as they enter the huge red and gold lift and the conductor pulls his lever, “The Grand Duke may be there.”

She’s speaking Russian, presumably so the conductor can’t understand; Vlad wonders if she’s recognised the danger, too. She probably knew long before he did - she was always better at intrigues than he.

“Who?” says Mitya, blank. Vlad wonders if he’s forgetting his family tree, but then Mitya says, “which Grand Duke?” which is a fair question, actually, given the number of cousins he has. Might have.

“Oh, _Cyril_ ,” Vlad groans, over the cranking of the lift chains. “That’s all we need.”

Lily says, “I don’t know for _sure_. He has been trying to get access to the Empress for weeks, she won’t acknowledge him as Emperor and it’s driving him insane. He’s staying with the Yusupovs.”

The lift doors let out a chime. Mitya says, shoulders stiff, “Felix Yusupov is in Paris?”

Lily glances at him, but there is no surprise on her face. Her eyes slide over to Vlad, who shrugs, as if to say, _I told you, didn’t I_? “He’s living on the _Rue Getenburg_ , with the Princess and their daughter. Came through Italy with the Polar Star diamond.”

Mitya makes a face, as though he’s smelled something bad, and says, “a coward and a murderer.”

Lily widens her dark eyes at Vlad. As if, Vlad thinks, he’s Mitya’s damned _father_ and should somehow be controlling him. He says, gruffly, “you’re not wrong, Mitenka, but it might be wise to keep that opinion to yourself this evening. Russian emigre society has let go of old grudges in favour of new ones. The only enemy is Lenin.”

They emerge into the great gilded lobby; Lily laughs, tinkling. “And the French,” she declares, and descends upon the startled-looking concierge to order them a car.

 

Anya is waiting by the door, twisting her gloves in her hands. She’s wearing white; the dress drops almost straight down to her hips, but instead of swamping her, Mitya seems to not know where to look, obviously overwhelmed with how much of her he can see. It falls off her slim shoulders, and as she turns towards him the heavy gold sequins catch the light and send the candles dancing. He clicks his heels together and bows over her hand. It’s easier to do that than attempt to speak. He tries to play it off as a joke, kisses her hand elaborately, says, “madame,” but Anya is silent. When they finally make eye-contact he finds her lost for words too, and shifts uncomfortably inside his heavy jacket. And then —

“You cut your hair!”

Anya’s hand flies to her short bob, the red hair swept into sharp points at her chin; it’s effortlessly chic and absolutely terrifying. Mitya can do nothing but stare. She goes flaming red. “What? Yes! Oh, Jesus, do you hate it?”

“No! I just — it’s so short!”

She begins to babble, petting at it: “it was only that the woman in the salon said that no one in France has long hair anymore, and i thought, seeing as we’re in Paris, and meeting an Empress, and it’s hardly like i could ever look like a princess, I may as well look —”

“It’s nice! I like it! It’s only that — you look so different. Your hair was so long.”

Without it she looks older, intimidating, marble. Anya turns agonised, doe-eyes on Lily, who steps in admirably, wrapping an arm around her charge’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, my dear, all the men in France despised the cut when it came in, and now they love it — it’s so much easier to keep.”

“I do love it!” Mitya exclaims, desperately. Vlad stifles a snort.

They are all very glad when the attendant ushers them towards the car.

 

And then: the ballet.

Mitya leads Anya up the broad marble steps; Vlad follows behind with Lily on his arm, her fluttering feathered fan snapped open so she can whisper to him from behind it, a move familiar enough to give him deja vu. He isn’t sure if he likes it or if it only increases the sick feeling in the base of his stomach. He’s never lacked for nerve, never backed out of a con, could never be accused of cowardice, but this: Mitya, in gold brocade, people parting in front of him with an instinct that Republican Paris should be ashamed of, the way everyone double-takes at him: it’s too much. Lily says, quietly, “Vovan, you’ve _found_ him.”

“I told you I had,” he says, absent, not really listening. He’s too occupied with his own concerns to listen to hers. Inside the door, she produces their invitations, only to find that Mitya and Anya have swept through without being asked for them. She raises one plucked dark eyebrow at Vlad, who gestures helplessly. “I _told_ you.”

“You can hardly blame me for not believing you, my darling, not after Peterhoff.” His invitation gives his name as Count Vladimir Popov; Vlad tries to remember what it was like to be that man. “I’ve never known a man to lie so well to me - and that’s a compliment.”

His affection for her at this statement is enough to swamp his terror, for now, and he kisses the back of her hand. “Ah, I take it as such, my love, don’t think for a second I don’t.” He turns her wrist over to inspect the clasp of her bracelet. “These are real diamonds?”

She smacks him on the shoulder with her fan. “You’re disgraceful,” she exclaims, delightedly. She never likes him so much as when he’s trying to steal from her. “They are, actually. Diamonds are our currency, now, you know. I haven’t seen a rouble in ten years.” She reaches out to straighten his military medals, which lie flat and heavy on his chest, six ribbons of lies.

“Neither have I,” he grins, “no money in St Petersburg. No food, either.”

“I thought you’d lost weight.” With the charming arrogance of a born Countess, she says, “we’ll feed you up, darling, you must’ve missed champagne,” and turns to find Mitya and Anya, who had tucked themselves under one of the archways, heads close together, one dark, one red. Anya’s dress scoops low over her back, her shoulder-blades visible in beautiful curves, almost wings, and Mitya’s hand rests between them with such casual intimacy that Vlad wonders if he’s missed something. Lily tracks his gaze and says, her hand still in his, “is she your daughter?”

There is no judgement in her tone, though if Anya were, he would have been with her mother while he was also with her - but Vlad shakes his head, surprised. “No.” He squeezes her hand at her sceptical expression. “ _No_ , I grew up with her father. A stupid man. A terrible card player.”

Lily smiles. “If one must gamble, one should at least be talented.”

“ _Exactly_.” Vlad says, “do you think -” but Lily cuts him off with a hissed exclamation in vicious army barracks French and drops his hand, gathers up her skirts, and strides across the entrance hall, the chandelier lights catching on her diamonds, on the soft blue of her gown. Vlad glances around, expecting to see the Dowager Empress, but instead, worse, sees, on a trajectory straight for Mitya, the Grand Duke. Cyril Romanov.

He can see the resemblance, Alexander II’s mouth on both of them, stubborn and set; the Grand Duke moves with long strides, also in army uniform, and Lily reaches Mitya at precisely the same time as he does. He’s the best they can find? Vlad thinks, disapprovingly, shaking his head. _He’s_ the new Emperor? Nicholas hadn’t been much to look at, that was true, slender as a willow, but he would have always been at a disadvantage, coming as he did after that great colossus, Alexander III. Cyril, in his attempt to intimidate Mitya, only appears neurotic. Then Vlad realises that Lily is gesturing frantically for him, remembers that he’s actually supposed to be _involved_ in this Romanov drama rather than just observing it, and hurries over.

Romanov is flanked by aides and companions, leaving Mitya, Anya, and Lily looking very isolated in the sea of onlookers. Anya has a hand on Mitya’s arm, and Vlad slips in next to him on the other side, rests a hand on his shoulder, arriving just in time to hear the end of the Grand Duke’s accusatory statement: “- the disrespect, to stand here in _his_ uniform.”

Mitya glances at Vlad, grateful for the momentary physical support, but under Vlad’s hand his shoulders are relaxed. “There is no disrespect intended,” he says. “Your own insecurity, on the other hand, says much.”

“Please, your Imperial Highness,” Lily attempts, smiling prettily at Cyril Romanov, a move that might’ve been more effective twenty years before, “let us not have a scene before the Empress arrives, she would not appreciate us upsetting our French hosts.”

“The Empress should, and _will_ , refuse to see this...this…” the Grand Duke is flushed red to the hairline with fury, “this _imposter_.”

“She can refuse if she likes,” Anya pipes up, staying obediently silent not at all in her nature, “but she’d be stupid to do it, and no one thinks she’s _stupid_.” Other things, maybe, goes unsaid, and a smile tucks itself into the corner of Mitya’s mouth.

Cyril Romanov’s eyes flicker over her and then away. The dismissal in them makes anger rise in Vlad’s throat, but he chokes it down. Lily’s right: a scene is pointless, especially in front of the French, who would not understand. If Vlad knows Romanov tempers - and he does - they leap straight to violence, and he scans the room, seeking out exits with a Petersburg rat’s instinct for trouble. He catches the eye of one of the waiters and jerks his head, summoning him over; an extra pair of hands, if the two launch themselves at each other. He’s been wracking his brains for the identity of Romanov’s companion, and the name has just come to him. _Trouble._

“You associate with con artists and whores,” Romanov snaps, and Vlad goes rigid. He is a con artist, and he supposes Anya _is_ a whore, under some definitions, and she isn’t his daughter, but still - _still_. Mitya puts a hand cautiously on his elbow.

“At least,” Mitya says, quite calmly, “I do not associate with murderers.” He nods his head towards the Grand Duke’s companion, but there’s no respect in it, and Vlad is very glad that he’s there, flanking Mitya, on the side his sword hangs. He shifts. He's fairly sure he could restrain Mitya if the moment called for it, but it was best to be prepared. “Dmitri Pavlovich. I don’t know how you can show your face to me.”

Lily trills, some hysteria under the diplomacy, “now, gentlemen, we are at the _ballet_.”

Dmitri Pavlovich is completely white, as though the blood is draining from his face from some hidden wound. Rasputin’s murder is written all over him, from head to polished shoe. Recognition is there, too, impossible to hide from. He attempts, “you cannot speak to me that way,” but it’s unconvincing and his voice shakes.

“After everything my father did for you.”

Pavlovich says, “ _Dima_.” It’s half pleading, half defensive, that wound opening onto his face. Cyril Romanov jumps as though someone has applied an electric shock to his palm, but Pavlovich ignores him. “You have to tell me. Did any of the others - _Olga_?”

Mitya says, a small crack appearing in his voice, “do not approach me again.”

There is no following threat. He turns on his heel; the doors to the theatre have opened. They leave Cyril Romanov there, choking on his anger, and next to him, Pavlovich, translucent with guilt.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? obsessed with Romanov family dynamics? it's more likely than you think!
> 
> [twitter](http://twitter.com/witchmp3) / [tumblr](http://witchplse.tumblr.com) / [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/witchplse) for anons


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